Congressman John Lewis may have described the reason for these concerns best, in a speech on the House floor last summer, when pointing out that the voting rights he worked throughout his life — and nearly gave his life — to ensure are, ‘under attack … [by] a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, [and] minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process.’ Not only was he referring to the all-too-common deceptive practices we’ve been fighting for years. He was echoing more recent fears and frustrations about some of the state-level voting law changes we’ve seen this legislative season.
For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson (via expose-the-light)
This quote resurfaces fairly frequently and I almost always reblog it, hoping that repetition will make the philosophy more of my own life and the lives of others.
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When Obama made his announcement about gay (marriage), I flashed back to (Lyndon B.) Johnson four days after President Kennedy is assassinated. He has to give his first speech to Congress and his advisers are sitting around and saying ‘Don’t mention civil rights. Don’t use up your political capital on civil rights. It’s a great cause, but it’s a lost cause.’ You know what Johnson says? ‘What’s a presidency for, then?’ And he says, in his speech, ‘The first thing we have to do is pass the Civil Rights bill.’
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Historian and LBJ biographer ROBERT CARO, on The Daily Show (via inothernews)
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If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born 95 years ago today. (via think-progress)
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The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.
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Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (via humanformat)
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This race in Wisconsin is the most important race in the country before the presidential election. June 5th. Republicans think they’ve got it in the bag. And if they do, they’re on their way to a permanent structural advantage over the Democratic party for which there is no repair. There’s no way to undo it. And that will affect every race in every partisan election on every ballot. It is less than two weeks until the vote in Wisconsin. At this point, the Democrats should be fighting for this like the existence of their party depends on it. Because it does.
The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.
I just want to tell you what it’s like not to have Planned Parenthood…you have to give your kids Ramen noodles at the end of the month to fill up their little bellies so they won’t cry. You have to give them mayonnaise sandwiches. They get very few fruits and vegetables because they’re expensive. It subjects children to low educational attainment because of the ravages of poverty.
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And let me tell you, you know the public policy has treated poor children and women who have not had the benefit of Planned Parenthood with utter contempt.
In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.
It is not the Congress that regulates Wall Street. It’s Wall Street that regulates the U.S. Congress.
Many in North Carolina — many around the country — are swimming against the tide of human freedom and blaming God for it. Again, this is not a new thing. We saw it back when God was for segregation and against women’s suffrage. How convenient it must be to lay your own narrowness and smallness off on God, to accept no responsibility for the niggardly nature of your own soul.
We are all connected. To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe, atomically.
What we of the Western worldview embrace as progress is best understood from an evolutionary perspective as a regression to a more primitive state of awareness. Our Western separation from nature—from life—has allowed us to greatly deepen human understanding of the inner mechanics of life. It has, however, alienated us from our understanding of life’s purpose; life’s capacity for non-mechanical self-direction, adaptation, and resilience; and what is truly sacred. We are just beginning to wake up to the self-deflating truth that to find our way to the path of the new green future, we must turn for guidance to the indigenous keepers of the original instructions who have survived the brutally invasive cultural and institutional forces of Westernization.
There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation.
